


war is never cheap dear

by irnan



Series: on a thin chain of moments and something like faith [1]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason meets the Batgirls. Predictably, they win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	war is never cheap dear

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Veiled, indirect reference to Jason's Word of God-described past as a child prostitute and implied (perceived) victim-blaming.

**(i - steph)**

Jason doesn’t usually bother being nervous. He usually has plans, and guns, and a smart mouth, and (always) an escape route, so there’s not much point to being nervous, yes? It seems… superfluous to requirements. Either you’re well-prepared, or you’re not.

So obviously he’s not. Nervous, that is.

Still, he really, really hates that part of himself that wants to be enjoying this situation, because, _no_ , and why, and also it pisses him off. Nineteenth-century English lit is a favourite of his, and the lady has been lecturing on Wilkie Collins, Constance Kent and the Gothic tradition for nearly an hour. Jason’s read _The Suspicions of Mr Whicher_ , and he – he’s sort of –

Yeah, OK, he’s really nervous. Uncomfortable. Something. The last time he was near a place anything like this, he was fifteen and half the teachers kept on calling him Mr Wayne, even though he’d told them he was going to keep using Todd. Callie Papas had kissed him behind the oak tree by the parking lot and her lips had tasted of strawberry chapstick. It was only the fourth time he’d ever been kissed.

Less than three weeks later, he was dead. Talk about your bad associations.

Jason rubs a hand over his eyes and slouches deeper into his seat. He’s got a page of jotted notes in front of him and a sheaf of dog-eared printouts. He slept for a grand total of twelve hours last night and he’s spent three days drinking no coffee but decaf, because he gets angry quicker if he’s tired and running on caffeine fumes, and he can’t afford to get angry if he’s gonna run around the Gotham U campus all week trailing Venetia Flynn.

Three rows down and two seats to his right, aforesaid Venetia Flynn shifts in her chair, checks her watch, glances at the door.

Jason taps his pencil against his notebook and watches her out of the corner of his eye. He’s gotta admit, she doesn’t look like an up-and-coming drug-dealing criminal mastermind. Not old enough, for one thing; but then again, they start ‘em young in Gotham.

Jason would know.

But Venetia’s got the drugs and the money and the mob boss dad over in Tricorner, and Jason supposes he’s seen kids with weirder ambitions. Probably. Somewhere.

Anyway.

Class dismissed; Jason slides out of his seat and wanders after Venetia, casual and curious. He makes himself look like the new kid, a transfer student unfamiliar with his new surroundings, and everyone ignores him. It’s lovely. It’s peaceful. It makes him tense and twitchy and angry.

(He doesn’t usually waste his precious time and mental energy comparing himself to Dick Grayson, but some days – some days Jason completely understands why the other man never bothers to fucking stand still unless he _has_ to.)

Venetia makes her way towards the cafeteria, which Jason could kiss her for, personally, as he’s starving. He dodges a couple guys in letterman jackets and nearly has an eye taken out by a girl swinging her rucksack around and ducks a dude carrying an art installation and then someone taps him on the shoulder, and he jumps.

“Hey, lit class, yeah?” says the girl. She’s got long blonde hair and tragic circles under her eyes, like she’s been pulling all-nighters since before Jason was even born. Her eyes are blue and her mouth is tipped into a smile he’s not sure he likes. “You’re new?”

“Uh – yeah. Hi.”

Wow, he’s really lost the knack of interacting with people who aren’t shooting at him.

“Hi,” she parrots back, grinning. What does she _want_ with him? He cranes his head a bit; Venetia Flynn has left the building. “Sorry, you must think I’m really weird, but I have, like, the worst case of insatiable curiosity ever, and also, and I never would’ve thought this could happen, but my friend Jordanna is totally refusing to come over here and chat you up even though she wants to.”

Jason sputters with laughter. “Riiiiight. OK then. I’m just gonna –“

“What’s your problem, don’t you believe me?” She’s laughing at him, this pretty girl with sunshine hair and not a care in the world. For a second, just one quick second, Jason wants to let himself be charmed by her.

“No,” he says instead. Shortly after Talia threw him in the Pit he shot up several inches and bulked up kind of a lot; he’s taller than Dick, now. He’s aware, in a distant way, that some people find that attractive, but seriously, he’s covered in scars and he looks like a vicious bruiser. And did he mention the scars?

Whatever this girl’s game is, Jason doesn’t want to play it. He walks away, because it’s easier than continuing the conversation, and heads out into the quad. Venetia Flynn is talking to a couple girls under the oak tree over by the dorms. Jason blinks against the sunlight and reminds himself to get sunglasses: it’s been so long since he went out in daylight that he doesn’t even own any.

Then again, Jason’s always had a private belief that in this town you could be born and live for decades and then die without ever _really_ seeing sunlight.

The blonde behind him says, “You know, if the point of this operation is to get close to Venetia Flynn you are _really_ gonna have to work on your flirting. Also just your people skills in general! Which are distinctly rusty. Not that I don’t get it, because mine were too. You know, when I came back.”

Jason stops short.

“Personally, I think we oughta start a club,” she adds. And when he still doesn’t move: “Hey. You don’t get to ignore me, Robin.”

OK, that cuts kinda deep. He turns, sighing. She’s standing on the bottom step so they’re almost of a height. She’s wary of him, but he’s pretty sure that underneath she thinks it’s funny as hell that she’s caught him out like this. She’s wearing sleeves and long pants just like he is: they hide the scars. The shape of her face, her stance; her knuckles, scarred over as unattractively as his own.

“Hell,” he says.

Batgirl shrugs. “I’m kind of disappointed that you’ve dyed the hair out,” she says. “I always thought the white streak sounded really sexy.” She grins again, challenging this time instead of flirtatious.

Jason likes that better. “I’ll send you some pictures,” he says, aiming for sarcastic but hitting ‘irritated’ and ‘rueful’ instead. “She yours?” meaning Venetia.

Steph frowns. “No,” she admits. “I knew who her Dad was, but – well, a lot of people in this town have supervillians for Dads, amiright?”

Willis Todd’s face flashes into Jason’s mind. Thankfully it’s been so long that Jason can’t really remember what the douchebag looked like; in his mind’s eye, he has features that are vaguely reminiscent of Bruce.

Man, that’s fucked up.

“Yeah, I guess they do,” he says. Only then does he remember that the Cluemaster was her father. Huh, well. “Listen.” He steps in close, puts a grin on; to most of the kids rushing past them, it’ll look like they’re flirting. “She’s running her thing in my neighbourhood. She’s got her people, or her Daddy’s people, selling drugs in nightclubs and bars; she’s not very subtle. I don’t think she’s as smart as she thinks she is, either. Sooner or later she’s gonna start selling to kids. Or she’s gonna get someone killed. Or both. I’d rather she didn’t. I assume we can agree on that at least.”

He’s acting like a condescending prick, isn’t he. Jason can’t seem to help it. Perfect, pretty Steph, all-American blonde cheerleader type, probably eats apple pie for breakfast, and Jason doesn’t understand how it’s fair that Bruce can look at the both of them and decide, arbitrarily, that Steph can still make good despite her Dad, despite where she’s from, but Jason never will.

(In his worst moments he knows that’s because Bruce knows Jason has been ruined since long before – before Ethiopia; Bruce knew what Jason was and what he’d done long before he made him Robin. And even in his best moments, the weakest ones, the ones that happen every now and then when Jason wants to fling his guns in the Gotham and run back home and bow back down under everything Bruce wants him to do and be in return for five minutes of comfort and belonging and _we’re stuck with each other now, Jay-lad_ … even then, Jason can’t convince himself of the opposite.)

Steph blows a strand of hair out of her face and crosses her arms. Jason waits for her to be done sizing him up, to shuffle him off into the usual categories. She’ll say something nasty, and he’ll make a comment about little girls being seen but not heard that his Mom would’ve cuffed him for, but whatever works: this isn’t even a real investigation, he’s sure as hell not putting up with the batbrats poking around in his business. Damian is a pain in his everything, and Princess Timmy the Replacement is a sanctimonious dick. (Ahahahahaha. Very funny joke, Little Wing.)

A more moderate voice in his mind suggests that the fact that this is not a real investigation really ought to mean that he should be OK with letting this thing go. And, Jason, let’s not forget that Batgirl’s  not…

What?

He doesn’t even know. Jason Todd, expert in pointless escalation, master of overkill.

“OK. My last class finishes at half past five, you will meet me back here on the dot with all the intel you have.”

He blinks. She plants her fists on her hips. “And no killing in the meantime.”

“Hey,” he says, feeling like he’s lost not just the thread of this conversation but the entire argument, whatever the argument was. “I’m not even armed.”

“Uh huh.”

“Do I really look like the sort of psycho that would bring a gun onto a campus full of idiot kids?”

“I don’t know, Jason,” says Steph, exasperated, and it gives him a weird sort of jolt to hear her say his name. He doesn’t know when he last heard his real first name from anyone but Bruce, or Talia, or Dick. “I don’t know jack about you, except that you were dead and now you’re potentially crazy. I mean, I say potentially ‘cause you’re not acting crazy right now, but – you know –“

“Potential?” Jason offers.

“Exactly! Potential. So. If you wanna do this on my campus then you do it by my rules, and one of my rules is, I’m in on it. The other one is: no one dies. The third one is, you don’t act like a condescending prick. Timmy has cornered the market on that and I don’t have time to break both of you of the habit. OK?”

Jason starts laughing. He can’t help himself, and he has to work at keeping a hysterical edge out of it. “Deal,” he manages at last, swallowing hiccups of laughter. Steph… he wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d taken a step back, or turned away, or just left him to it, but she hasn’t. She looks like she doesn’t know what the hell to do with him, but she’s still there. “Oh, Christ. Damn. Sorry.” He holds out a hand to shake. “Deal.”

She takes a few more seconds to study him. “For serious,” she says, hand hovering above his own. “You’re just gonna take no for an answer and run with it.”

Jason smiles. “I don’t know what the hell kind of people you hang with, BG,” he says. “But where I’m from, when a lady says no, she means no.”

Steph barks a laugh and wraps her fingers around his own. “Is that so.”

“Yes,” he says, surprised at himself, at his own acceptance of her conditions. But, well. She’s not a part of his vigilante soap opera family drama with Bruce, is she? And…

And it would be nice, just this once, just for one case, to be… to not be alone. For a while.

“Hey, Steph?” Jason says. “Meet me back here after class? There’s some stuff I need to show you.”

She sniffs. “We’re gonna have a real problem here if you think you’re gettin’ the last word ever, pal.” Her fingers close into a fist as his hand slides out of hers, as if she’s trying to hold on to the feel of them. For a moment she stares at him openly, looking almost expectant, like she’s searching for something in his face, or waiting for him to say something else, something specific and meaningful. Then she blinks and nods and looks away and he thinks he imagined it.

“Later,” she says, putting a smile back on.

“Sure,” Jason says, stepping away. Back to work, Todd.

But it’s Steph he watches as he crosses the quad, not Venetia.

 

 

**(ii – cass)**

He’s sitting on a gargoyle and smoking when she lands on a roof behind him. She’s so soundless he can’t help but think that it’s Bruce for a moment; then he remembers Bruce hasn’t shown his face in Gotham in nearly three months.

“Thought you were _Him_ ,” he says. Claws like Catwoman’s, and those bandages. He’s not sure what the point of them is. Then again, the other week he was talking to Cristal over a beer and she swore up and down that Nightwing’s disco costume was super hot, so. There’s no accounting for people.

She grins. “I wanted it.”

Jason barks a laugh. “But?”

“I was needed in Hong Kong.”

“ _You’re needed elsewhere_ is usually Batspeak for _it’s an elaborate and fucked up test_.”

She’s still grinning.

“Met your Dad in Mogadishu once.”

“My mother too?”

Jason purses his lips and takes a drag on his cigarette. She’s not about to let him unsettle her; he respects that, he supposes.

“Only once.”

“Was enough for me,” says Cassandra. Jason laughs.

“What’re you here for?”

“Come to meet you,” she explains. “Brother.”

He actually jerks away; there’s a second when he’s on the verge of falling off the damn gargoyle, which is so embarrassing he can’t actually look her in the face when she gets a hold of his leather jacket and settles him down.

“Sorry.”

“I’m fine.”

“Hmm.”

“We are not, however, siblings.”

Her turn to laugh. Her cape falls over the edge of the parapet; unlike Dick’s or Bruce’s, it’s not cut with a view to using it as a glider in an emergency. It’s cut to mimic smoke and shadow, ragged and flaring.

“Steph told me about the case with Flynn,” says Cass. “I thought… time to meet you, properly.”

“Because we’re _siblings_.” He invests the word with all the sarcasm he has in him.

“Yes,” she says simply.

Jason shakes his head.

She shrugs. “You’re… curious, to know me. You think I’m good. You won’t… attack me.”

“Not unless you start it,” he says.

“Been watching you.”

“Jesus,” he says gloomily.

“Surveillance is a sign of affection,” she says primly.

He bursts out laughing. “Says who?!”

Cass shrugs. “In this family? Everyone.”

“Oh!” Jason stubs his cigarette out and flicks the end over the parapet. “Better mark littering in my bat-file.” He lights another, offers her one. Cass looks thoughtful; then she actually takes it. Jason lights it for her, amused.

“Don’t drag too hard,” he says.

“Tastes strange.”

“Keeps off the hunger pains,” he says, watching her closely.

She rolls her eyes at him. “I know. I used to steal… the blue ones.”

Jason pauses. “Winston?”

“Don’t know. Couldn’t read at the time.”

“Hmph,” he says. “Well, I like Parisienne. Got a taste for ‘em in Switzerland a couple years ago. Can be hard to find over here, though.”

They smoke their cigs in silence; then Cass takes another, and Jason, though he doesn’t usually light up three in a row like this, joins her.

“But you quit?” he asks her.

“After No Man’s Land. Enough food. Easier to breathe.”

Jason nods. There doesn’t seem to be much else to say, really. He’s just gonna perch uncomfortably on a gargoyle, chain-smoking with his sister, and saying nothing.

Awesome.

Cass is grinning at him again.

“Our Golden Boy’s lectures appear to have tailed off,” he says. “Not dead, is he?”

Emphatic shake of that dark head. “Trying to make Damian go to school.”

Jason laughs so hard he nearly falls off the gargoyle again.

“I know,” says Cass, chuckling.

“Oh, I can see the headlines. _Ten year old ninja wreaks bloody havoc in local middle school_ ,” Jason chokes out. “ _Batman deeply apologetic_. Oh, man.”

She giggles. “He’s learning.”

Jason laughs. “Yeah, but what?”

“Ha!” says Cass, looking like she’s just caught him out. “Not to do what you do.”

“… ow,” says Jason.

“Accurate.”

“OK,” he says. “You, of all people, don’t get –“

“Yes I do,” says Cass. “Of course I do. Why… did you think I wear this?” She taps her fingertip against the yellow outline across her chest.

“ _I_ don’t _know_ , brainwashing?”

She glares at him.

“What?”

“You didn’t know?”

Jason is officially lost. “About what?”

“Oh,” she says. “Never mind then.”

“Don’t get your bat-tights in a twist,” he says, trying for companionable, trying to get the conversation back on a stable footing. “Why _do_ you wear it, then?”

Cass reaches up and takes her mask off. She’s got dark eyes, which Jason… wasn’t actually expecting at all. He thought she’d be blue-eyed like all the rest of them, despite her Asian heritage.

He’s not sure whether that says something about his assumptions about Bruce or about her.

“I killed someone,” she says. “When I was small. Still a child.”

Jason doesn’t move even to flick ash off his cigarette.

“I killed him. I stood over him… I watched.” She stops then. She swallows hard, and her hands clench briefly, and then she takes yet another cigarette. He lights it for her again, because it’s bobbing up and down between her fingers.

“I saw him… go away,” she says. “I looked at him, and I saw… nothing. Black. Empty.”

Jason stands up. He drops the lighter on the parapet, picks up his helmet again. Cass looks up at him. Unmasked, her face is very pale in the dim streetlight-glow from beneath them.

“We’re done here,” he says harshly.

“I didn’t understand,” she says. “I could never… do that again.”

“I said, _we’re done here_!”

“Barbara gave me myself back. A way to… be who I am, without being that.”

“Shut up!”

“I wish you’d come home,” says his sister. “Tim… used to talk about you sometimes. How one day… he’d be as good as you. He’d talk to your uniform for hours. Damian… you could help him too. And whenever Dick mentioned you, he looked… like someone was hitting him.”

Jason starts backing away. His legs feel like jelly. She hasn’t so much as stood up. The cigarette smoke wreathes up around her face and into the night sky. “We’re done here,” he repeats: quiet, hopeless. His hands are shaking so badly he doesn’t trust himself to cast a jumpline.

Cassandra stubs her cigarette out. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she says.

Behind the mask he’s still wearing he closes his eyes. Rustle of her cape as she stands.

“Happy birthday, Jason.”

She is, thank God, gone before he starts to cry.

 

 

**(iii – barbara)**

He walks into a cop-riddled diner without a mask or a gun or, as far as she can tell, any weapons at all. He’s wearing a leather jacket and a thin green t-shirt: Robin-green. She wonders if he’s consciously realised that. His jeans have holes in the knees. His boots are scuffed up and mudstained. There’s a white streak in his hair above his right eye. His hands, when he puts them on the table, slides into the seat opposite her, are big and scarred and calloused.

He used to swagger, the teenage-boy walk of a self-confident kid who knew who he was, what he was capable of. He doesn’t swagger anymore, but that’s more impressive.

Then again, she’s always thought swaggers were inherently ridiculous. The only person Barbara Gordon has ever known who can swagger and make it impressive is Dick Grayson, but that’s mostly just because Dick can make any movement impressive if he really wants to. Dick’s a performer.

Jason is too, but not in a fun way.

“Surprise,” he says. “Remember me?”

She hasn’t seen him since he came back – not in the flesh. It makes her feel guilty, which makes her angry, which makes her snap at him.

“Eidetic memory, _squirt_.”

“Oh, well, I had trouble recognising you from up here,” he says.

Barbara’s so angry she goes still all over, and then she goes red, which is a sad hazard of, y’know, being a redhead, especially when coupled with a pale complexion.

“I really don’t know how you _dare_ ,” she snarls.

“Please,” he says. “Surely I, of all people in this city, get to make that joke! After all, you lived.”

“You’re a resentful, bitter piece of shit,” says Barbara.

Jason leans back in the booth and smirks. “Takes one to know one.”

That hits so close to home she can’t do anything but laugh, which is its own kind of fucked-up.

“God. OK.” She collapses backwards in the bench seat, lets all the fight go out of her. It’s like fighting with Dick: they both know exactly where to hit each other so it hurts. She can’t do it. She’s too tired right now, and anyway she fights with Dick enough; she doesn’t need to start one with their mentally unstable little brother as well. “What do you want, Jason?”

“Oh, well, I came by to see how you were,” says Jason innocently. “You know, drink some coffee, eat some waffles, play catch-up! I haven’t seen you in, what, six years? Of course, I was out of town for a while there.”

Barbara crosses her arms over her chest. “Waffles, huh.”

“Once is a coincidence. Twice is a pattern.”

“Come again?”

“I gather from what Cass said that she and Steph tend to listen to you more than B. Make ‘em back the fuck off.”

“You think,” says Barbara, “I’m making them do… what?”

“I don’t think you’re making them do anything,” says Jason easily. “I think you can make ‘em stop.”

She’s honesty puzzled. “Stop what?”

He gestures irritably, something between miming throttling someone and tossing something away. “The – I don’t even know. First Steph muscles into one of my cases and then Cassandra decides I – what? What?”

Babs is laughing. She pushes her empty coffee cup and her tablet out of the way and slumps in the seat and laughs and laughs and laughs, and it feels better than just about anything has in a really long time. The strangest thing about looking at Jason now is how little he’s changed: the square jaw and the sharp nose and the heavy black eyebrows and even the tuft of curls at his forehead were all there, at least implicitly, when he was fifteen. His eyes are still that clear grey-blue. His mouth moves into the same half-smile; even his hands speak with the same wide movements when his words fail him.

“Aww, baby,” she says, wiping at her eyes. “Little sisters won’t leave you alone so you thought Auntie Babs would make them stop?”

Unwilling amusement paints itself across his face, but he doesn’t answer. Probably doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth without laughing.

“Oh my,” says Babs, giggles dying down. “All right, Boy Wonder. I’ll bite. What awful things did they do to you? Pulled your pigtails?” She snickers. “Made you talk about your _feeeeeeeelings_?”

“You’re trying to tell me,” he says, “that nothing’s going on here. That you’re not all reporting this back to Bruce, or –“

“I don’t answer to Bruce,” snaps Babs. When he gives her an impassive look, she admits, “Well, I kind of do, but only sometimes. And not about this. And look. Did you know – of course you didn’t know. B – when Steph was – had your old job – all he could do was compare her to you. And he took Cass to your grave once. This is your dead brother, sweetie, he used to like Neapolitan ice cream and Marlboros. Honour his memory! Like that filthy case wasn’t bad enough.”

“He never knew what brand I smoked,” says Jason, sounding faintly indignant.

Barbara shakes her head. “Did you hear no other word of what I said?”

He meets her eyes for the first time. “I heard all of them.”

“And?” she demands.

“You were always pushy, BG,” he says.

“Answer me.”

“Ask a question,” he mocks.

“What are you gonna do about it?”

He looks away, out of the window to the darkening street. It’ll rain soon, she’s sure. “Was it true what Cass said about the – about Tim, and –“

“His periodic attempts to commune with your ghost?” says Babs. “Oh, yes.” She watches the tight lines of his mouth, the way his eyes have gone distant. “Imagine how he felt when the first thing you did when you came back was try to kill him.”

Jason doesn’t react in any way, but Barbara suspects that’s because he’s trained it out of himself, not because he’s not affected by what she said. She wants to touch him, then, wants to reach out and take his hand, or lay hers on his shoulder. She wants to turn his face back to her and say, the door is open, the door is always open.

“If,” he says, “at any point, there’d come a time when you could’ve killed him, would you have?”

She wishes she didn’t know the answer to that. “No,” she says quietly. “No, I think I couldn’t have. I think it would’ve destroyed my Dad if I had.”

Now he laughs. “You know, that’s actually a better excuse than most I’ve heard.” He looks at her again as he slides out of the booth and stands up. He’d tower over her now even if she could stand as well.

“I missed you,” Barbara says. “Very much.”

And he reaches out to her, the briefest touch of his hand to hers. “But you always were a really good liar.”

“Not as good as you,” she says.

“No,” says Jason cheerfully. “But then again, who is?”

“Bruce,” she says simply.

“There’s some things even he can’t fake.”

“He loves you.”

“He’s got a funny way of showing it.”

Barbara snorts. “Well – yeah. It’s _Bruce_.”

Jason gives her a smile again: the half-mournful smile of a man who’s talking about a dead loved one, someone missed but no longer being grieved for. “I’ll see you around, BG,” he says.

Barbara closes her eyes and takes a breath. It’s been a long, long time since it was last so important to find the right words. Like picking your way through a minefield, and once again she is reminded of Dick. He sets more stock by words than Jason does, but not by much.

When she calls out to him he’s almost out of the door already. “I’d like that.”

Jason glances back, catches her eye. For a moment she can see the surprise painted across his face clear as day, before he wipes it off. She doesn’t smile at him. He wouldn’t believe it.

He tips her a grin and a wink, and then he’s gone. Barbara breathes out slowly, waiting for the brief clench of anxiety to die down. Then she lets herself smile.

One for her side.


End file.
